Santorum vs. Hagel

Rick Santorum will launch a drive against the nomination of former Republican Senator Chuck Hagel as Defense secretary, CNN has learned.

Santorum really is the hawkish gift that keeps on giving. If there is one current or former elected official other than John McCain who embodies everything wrong with the Republican Party’s current foreign policy thinking, it would have to be Rick Santorum. It’s appropriate that Santorum is launching an anti-Hagel campaign, because he is in some important respects the anti-Hagel in terms of temperament and foreign policy views. Where Hagel was a grudging supporter and later critic of the Iraq war, Santorum was an unflinching supporter of the invasion and occupation, and he remains so until now. As wary of war as Hagel can be because of his experience in combat, Santorum is the classic example of the heedless activist/ideologue whose obsession with talking about foreign policy issues is equaled only by his staggering ignorance of the rest of the world.

Faced with the debacle in Iraq, Santorum not only failed to learn anything from that, but railed against the Bush administration for being insufficiently aggressive towards Iran and other countries. The disaster in Iraq caused Hagel to become more skeptical and prudent about the use of force. Santorum concluded from the same experience that the U.S. needed to become even more confrontational in its dealings with every pariah state and the major authoritarian powers. Santorum’s re-election bid in 2006 was always going to be difficult, but he ensured that a likely loss turned into the most humiliating rout of an incumbent Senator ever by making the election a referendum on his fanatical foreign policy views.

Instead of being chastened by the overwhelming repudiation of those views, Santorum intensified his support for reckless and militaristic policies. He was bound to be opposed to Hagel’s nomination. There has scarcely been one sound idea related to foreign policy and the military that Santorum hasn’t opposed. The GOP has a choice in the coming years on foreign policy: it can become more like Santorum or it can become more like Hagel. If the party chooses the former, its political fortunes over the long term will be every bit as bright as Santorum’s.

P.S. In case anyone has forgotten, one of Santorum’s last votes was to oppose Robert Gates, who was at that time Bush’s nominee for Secretary of Defense.

The GOP has a choice in the coming years on foreign policy: it can become more like Santorum or it can become more like Hagel.

The latter is better, but those are not, or ought not to be, the only options. Hagel is no Paul or Buchanan.

I support the Hagel nomination, but can’t get too worked up about it. Santorum had a good immigration restrictionist record, a mixed record on trade (no on NAFTA, mostly free trade otherwise), but this deal-killing lunacy on foreign affairs. Hagel is an open-borders, free-trading, moderate hawk (not even a moderate dove); that he is now being painted as some kind of McGovern liberal by movement con phonies is just a farce.

Of course, I agree that those are not the only options. I don’t mean to say that they are. I know Hagel’s record and try not to attribute views to him that he has never held. The opportunity to compare the responses of Santorum and Hagel to the Iraq war seemed too good to pass up. The current alternatives for the GOP are to improve gradually on foreign policy or to remain stuck where they are. Before most Republicans can adopt Paul-like views, they have to stop viewing someone like Hagel as completely unacceptable. Unfortunately, that will take some time.

I was about to ask the same thing as the earlier commenters. How on earth does this man manage to portray himself as a Christian given his inhumane policy preferences? Of course, everyone should be free to identify themselves how they choose, but are no there no objective standards anymore? It’s not hard – when Santorum starts spouting out for whatever war he wants next, the nearest journalist should simply ask him how he squares his hawkishness and aggression with his professed Christian principles? One would think at this point, nothing that a US politician says should be taken at face value, but I guess that’s not the case.

Santorum doesn’t have to justify his sabre-rattling because he only wants the same things that God wants. He thinks that is self-evident. Clearly, God hates all the same people and things Rick Santorum does.

Like most people, Santorum’s religion doesn’t call him to repentance as a spiritual force outside himself would, but confirms him in his own prejudices, essentially making him look self-righteous and hypocritical to skeptics.

When Rick Santorum so incredibly stupidly opposed the nomination of Robert Gates for Defense, did he actually believe the US was “in peril” from the religion of well over one billion people world-wide? Or was he just pretending?

did he actually believe the US was “in peril” from the religion of well over one billion people world-wide? Or was he just pretending?

James, I have to point out: first–it is way more than one billion and, secondly, for all declaration of American “imperial” essence–Americans (overwhelming majority of them) have no clue what Empire is, when the subjects of those far away lands (aka colonies) begin to move to metropole. British know this today first hand. Until one experienced people with VASTLY different culture (wait, US does have this, albeit peculiar, experience–it is called 12 million illegals) living next door, literally, any discussion on the subject or, for that matter, generalizations become futile. In order to illustrate what I mean, you may visit some documentaries about celebration of…..Kurban Bairam in Moscow.

Then I can talk about cultural, criminal and….tactical (and strategic) implications of that. Sure, one (plus) billion of those people just sleep and dream of how to incorporate themselves into the society which likes jazz, rock’n’roll, good whiskey and hot girls.

Until one experienced people with VASTLY different culture (wait, US does have this, albeit peculiar, experience–it is called 12 million illegals) living next door, literally, any discussion on the subject or, for that matter, generalizations become futile.

Yeah, I mean who ever heard of Muslims living in the US and not being some weird exotic other, right?

For years I defended Santorum, arguing he wasn’t as insane as his critics claimed and as his support of misguided and proveably wrong policies suggested.

I was wrong.

Realty shows about baby-mommies from the ghetto and a major political party already run off the cliff and continuing to kick in the air like Wile E. Coyote waiting for gravity to resume. Who needs television? America is now become its own lampoon.

Sure, Santorum’s proposals are stupid. But I suspect he’s no more personally stupid than your standard televangelist huckster, if I’m not being redundant.

It’s been upwards of five years since Santorum has held public office. That suggests to me he’s more concerned with following the Newt Gingrich model for the ousted-pol good life — bilk the rubes and donors for as long as you can keep your name in the headlines — than with actually stepping up to do any real public service. Like, say, running for an office he has a chance of winning, or accepting an administrative appointment. Nice nonwork if you can get it.

Santorum is going to “launch a drive” to oppose Hagel, is code for “is going to ask for money.”

He’ll either do it from his perch at WND or use a PAC.

The GOP is nothing more than a grift these days. They get their target audience – that good old 27%, immortalized in many a fundraising database – scared and angry, promise to stop whatever the latest Threat to America might be, and say they can’t do it “without your support; please contribute what you can.”

I live in Santorum’s home state of PA. Instead of his quixodic presidential run, he could have tried to regain his senate seat in a rematch against Obama yes-man Robert Casey. He chose not to as I think he knew he would be humiliated.